At some point another Doctor Mask and Light told me that I was at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and had had multiple strokes (whatever ”strokes” were). I couldn’t talk because my teeth were biting down into something hard that was crowbarring my mouth open . I don’t have solid memories of this period, as I’d later find out I was heavily drugged up on somethings called fentanyl and propofol.

More Doctor Masks and Lights made me squeeze their hands, give thumbs up and try to lift my arms and wiggle my toes (I could do none of the above on my left side). But mostly, I was just oblivious to the world around me during this time. Thank God.

I heard voices in the room assert that”The wife was insistent that he not be woken up unless she was here”.

Clearly they botched that, since I was awake to hear their discussion.

I was also cognizant of something foreign in my throat that I didn’t like and set to work trying to rip it out. The Doctor Masks must not have liked that, because I went totally unconscious again at that point and they affixed some sort of glove to my hand to inhibit my ability to pull out the object running down my throat.

On September 18th 2021, my wife raced home from work early to find me passed out and unresponsive on the couch. She knew something was wrong when I didn’t immediately respond to her text messages hours beforehand about ordering something online (if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s spending money online)and continued to not respond throughout the afternoon .

After finding me, my wife quickly called the paramedics, who burst into our house a few minutes later and took me away in an ambulance (there’s an experience I can scratch off my scorecard—booyah) to a nearby Emergency Room. I’m told that while the paramedics were trying to revive me and set me up on the stretcher, they knocked over and spilled my untouched(but uncapped) daily 20 oz. Pepsi that was on an adjacent table. What a waste.